


Love For A Child

by alltoowell



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Alternate Universe, Kidfic, Kinda, Mentions of child sexual abuse, i'm ignoring all the weird sexual tension among these guys, they're 11 but they're brats
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-22 10:27:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 17,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15579942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltoowell/pseuds/alltoowell
Summary: AU where Bonnie and Frank are foster kids taken in by Annalise and Sam.Chapter Prompts courtesy of 100 theme challange, https://www.deviantart.com/100themewriters/art/The-Original-List-of-Themes-125161634





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> I plan on these chapters following a chronological path as the kids grow up (eventually hoping to integrate K5, Nate, etc.) but who knows if that will change. For now, let's just enjoy a universe where this typically dysfunctional dynamic makes some kind of sense. 
> 
> Kudos and comments are much appreciated!

  1. **Introduction.**



The introduction took place over breakfast.

It was not planned that way, of course. Both Sam and the social worker had had reservations - something about disrupting Frank’s stability and instigating a chaotic transition as opposed to a smooth one. They both spoke like there were better options, which was ridiculous to Annalise - as if it were not the middle of the night and Bonnie had not already spent too long in the group home.

By the time Annalise had gotten her settled in the guest bedroom, it seemed more disruptive to wake Frank. They could meet in the morning.

After the social worker had left (with the promise to check in the following afternoon) Sam had sat on the edge of their bed and reminded her again what a responsibility it was to take on a child with a past like Bonnie’s. “I don’t need your advice on how to handle this,” Annalise had said, when what she really meant was _I don’t need your approval - so shut the hell up._

The next morning, Frank came into the kitchen while Annalise was pouring milk into Bonnie’s cereal - Cheerios, after much shrugging and blushing and ‘I don’t mind’’s - and stopped short in the doorway when his eyes fell on the stranger giggling at Sam’s jokes.  

Annalise met his eyes across the kitchen, and Sam, following hers, turned in his seat toward Frank, the smile he’d had for Bonnie fading when he saw the look on their foster son’s face.

“Frank,” Sam said carefully, “You remember we told you about Bonnie, right?”

They had also told him that they wouldn’t move forward with fostering her until he was comfortable with it, but then Bonnie had told Annalise that the father of the family she’d spent the last week with sometimes sat too close to her when they were alone and had walked in on her getting dressed twice, and Annalise had made the decision that Frank would just have to deal.

“I thought you said - ” Frank began, frowning, and Bonnie, beside Annalise, tensed and ducked her head.

“- things changed.” Annalise interrupted, putting the bowl in front of Bonnie and handing her a spoon. She motioned to the space beside Sam at the table. “Sit down and eat something before school.”

Sam shot her a look as he took a long sip of coffee. Then, when Frank did not follow her order, he turned to him instead. “Come on. Come say hi.”

Frank was too old to be coached and beckoned like this, but he’d been with them long enough to know it was easier to do what he was told. Reluctantly, he sulked over to the spare chair and sat down.

Bonnie lifted her head for long enough to muster a soft, “Hi,” which had Annalise raising her eyebrows at Sam, an indignant and unspoken _at least_ she’s _trying._

Frank’s response was to stare Bonnie out until she returned to pushing the wholegrain loops around her bowl with her spoon, brow furrowed as if she were thinking very hard. Then, he turned to Sam.

“So is she gonna live here now?”

Sam looked to Annalise for help, but she was too busy watching Bonnie - shoulders hunched, hair falling in her face as she held her spoon at an angle that purposely filled it only with milk while the Cheerios floated idly by. What was she thinking?

“Yes.” She knew Sam wanted to add ‘ _for now_ ’ but knew better than to in front of Bonnie.

Frank barely tried to hide a scowl. “Does she have to go to _my_ school?”

“Eventually she will, yes,” Sam continued evenly. “But not right away. It’s the middle of the term, and she’s still enrolled in her old school. We’re going to talk to your principal this week and try and figure something out.”

This news was received despondently. Frank mumbled something about not being hungry, and then Bonnie asked if she could use the bathroom - because, as Annalise suspected, she had been unsuccessful in wishing the ground would open and swallow her up, and hiding was the next best thing.

  
“You don’t have to ask,” Sam said softly, and she took this as her cue to slip off her chair and disappear into the hallway. When she was gone, Frank’s cheeks reddened, all bravado gone now he had lost his audience.

“How come she hasn’t been adopted?” he asked, loud enough that she would overhear if she were at all coy enough to be listening. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Nothing,” Sam replied, and Annalise wished that - to Sam, at least - that that wasn’t a lie. “You know how it is, Frank - it isn’t easy to be adopted at your age.”

“So why is that _our_ problem?” Was Frank’s next question, and Annalise couldn’t help but snort, despite the glare coming from Sam.

“If it wasn’t ‘ _our problem_ ,’ you’d still be running away from care homes,” she pointed out. “Drop the attitude, Frank and we’ll talk when you get home from school.” Then, she reached across the kitchen counter for her handbag and slung it over her shoulder, heading into the hallway, not surprised at all when Sam followed.

“Where are you going?” He demanded as she grabbed her keys from the table by the front door.

“I’m taking Bonnie to the pediatrician. The medical workup that social services did was shody to say the least. Besides, she’s behind on vaccinations.” The appointment wasn’t for another hour, but Annalise was factoring in the time it would take to talk the skittish pre-teen into seeing a doctor.

Annalise predicted there would be tears.

“Dr. Campbell?” Sam asked, referencing the same doctor they’d taken Frank to when they’d first brought him home. When she nodded, he narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t tell me you’d made her an appointment.”

“I _just_ did.” She ignored his sigh and leaned over the bannister, “Bonnie!”

“Do you think that’s wise? I mean, what if - ” Sam hesitated, careful not to say _what if we don’t keep her, “-_ things don’t work out?”

“We still don’t want the kid to get Rubella or Hepatitis,” Annalise said, folding her arms. “What’s all this about anyway? Aren’t you always the one getting on me about positive thinking?”

“I know that, but I think we need to discuss what we’re going to do about Frank,” Sam insisted, and Annalise shrugged as she heard footsteps on the stairs.

“Give him some extra fruit for recess, he’ll be fine.” She met Bonnie’s eyes and motioned to the coat rack by the door. “Grab your coat, we’re going out.”

“I wasn’t talking about _breakfast_ , Annie.” Sam was trying very hard to keep his voice light in front of Bonnie, but Annalise didn’t much see the point. The girl was shy and quiet and jumpy - but she wasn’t an idiot, and there wasn’t a lot they could shield her from at this stage.

“This is how things are now. Frank will get used to it.” She turned to Bonnie, who was slipping into her coat with apprehension and a forlorn frown, like maybe she thought they still might change their mind and bring her back, like maybe she knew Annalise was the only one stopping that from happening. “We’ll _all_ get used to it,” Annalise clarified pointedly, more of a command than a reassurance.


	2. Complicated

**2\. Complicated**

Annalise was furious. 

He could tell, could feel it coming off her waves as they sat next to each other, and not just because he knew her so well - because Annalise was not the kind of woman who hid her anger behind a tight smile and a sarcastic platitude. She raged and she roared, all passion and unapology and that was one of the things he’d fallen in love with first. 

She stormed out of the principal’s office after interrupting Mrs Fasser mid-sentence to cite her as “useless” and dismissing the meeting as “a colossal waste of time,” leaving him to awkwardly thank the lady and tell her they would be in touch. 

He caught up with Annalise at the end of the hallway, where Bonnie was sitting on a bench with an open book in her lap. Her eyes widened when she saw them, the fierce clap of Annalise’s heels against the linoleum floor an obvious indication of her mood. It occurred to Sam this might be the first time Bonnie had seen Annalise like this. 

“We’re leaving,” Annalise barked, not waiting for Bonnie to rise before turning the corner sharply. 

Sam let her go. He stopped beside Bonnie and gave her a small smile as she shuffled to her feet. 

“Sorry you had to wait so long,” he said gently, as they fell into step together, Annalise disappearing from their sight, taking the hallway like she was running that damn Mrs Fasser out of the building. 

Bonnie, predictably, shrugged. “It’s okay.” 

He couldn’t imagine very much making her frustrated. So far, he had watched Frank blank her, bait her with insults, and, last night while they were having dinner together, kick her chair repeatedly. She had yet to react beyond a pout, which he knew only served to drive Frank even crazier. 

Annalise, to his complete surprise, had told him he was wrong for scolding Frank. “You need to back off and let her deal with it herself.” 

“She  _ isn’t  _ dealing with it, that’s the problem.” He’d thought, awfully, that if she’d at least burst into tears, it might make Frank feel guilty and apologise. As it stood, her non-reaction was only igniting his resentment more. 

“People are going to treat her badly her whole life if she lets them. The sooner she learns  _ she  _ has to be the one to set the boundaries, the better. Mark my words, one of these days she’s going to snap and put him in his place,” Annalise had replied. 

Sam didn’t think that Bonnie, who was shy by nature and devastatingly accustomed to abuse, had the kind of nerve to fire back at Frank’s pettiness. When he voiced this concern to Annalise, she rolled her eyes. 

“She has to learn to stand up for herself, to find her voice and use it to  _ roar _ , or else no one is ever going to listen to her. If she can’t handle  _ Frank  _ then the world is going to eat her alive.”

As they walked out of the school to the car - where Annalise was waiting, the engine burning as she shut off the radio - Sam looked to Bonnie, holding the book she had been given by the guidance counselor in front of her like a shield, the principal's rejection of her still ringing in his ears, and thought that maybe they were too late, and the world already  _ had _ . 

Annalise did not speak the entire drive home, which meant Bonnie didn’t either. Sam gave up making conversation after the third red light, and they sat in silence until they pulled into the driveway and he swore out loud. 

Frank was sitting on the porch steps, sulking, and for once Sam didn’t even blame him. They should have had the principal tell his teacher to send him to the office to wait for them when school broke for the day; they should have reminded him that morning that there would be no one home if he walked. 

Annalise sprang out of the car. Sam watched as she stepped around Frank to get to the door. 

Bonnie hung back, waiting for him to clear the path ahead of her. “Hey, buddy,” he said, and then Frank was glaring and storming into the house and away from him the same way Annalise had in the school. 

Inside, he heard Frank’s bedroom door slam shut. He turned to Bonnie. “You wanna go upstairs and read?” he’d barely gotten the question out when she nodded, and then she was gone too, and he was left in the hallway, listening as Annalise banged around in the kitchen. 

“ _ I’ll _ make dinner,” he offered, coming into the kitchen, before realising the noise was not coming from her cooking, but searching through the cupboards for a bottle of vodka. “Annie,” he said, exasperated, “you’re overreacting.” 

“Overreacting?” Her voice rose, and he hoped the kids were smart enough to make use of their headphones. “ _ Overreacting _ ? You didn’t actually believe that garbage about not having a place in the class for her? It was obvious what it was about to them - the money. If we were paying, and not the state, you can bet they’d have found a damn place.” 

The thought had crossed his mind, too. The same principal had told them seven months ago when they’d enrolled Frank, with a weary smile, that it wasn’t ‘the norm’ for them to take ‘children of the state.’ He guessed they’d filled their quota, and weren’t keen on exceeding it without a check to soften the blow to their image.  

“There are other schools,” he reminded her, gently. “And maybe it’s for the best. You know what those teachers are like with Frank. Tough, strict - which is fine, it’s the kind of structure he needs. But Bonnie… Bonnie, she might need a different approach.” 

“You mean she needs coddled?” Annalise slammed the bottle of vodka down on the counter and turned to him with a fire in her eyes. “Well, she  _ doesn’t _ . I know what she needs, and it’s for you to stop treating her like she’s made of glass. She needs to be in the  _ best  _ school, because she’s smart and she wants to learn and she’ll throw herself into it and because  _ that’s  _ what’s going to make her feel like a normal eleven year old - not spending her days in therapist offices and reading damn self-help books.” 

“Recovery from trauma is more complicated than that.” 

“Do you think  _ I  _ don’t know that?” Her words hung between them, until he sighed and crossed the kitchen to put his hands on her shoulders. She flinched under his touch - more residual anger than genuine discomfort, he knew - but she didn’t move away. 

“Annie,” he said gently. “We don’t know what she said to the guidance counsellor. Maybe she doesn’t even  _ want  _ to start a new school right now.” 

Bonnie had expressed that very anxiety to the psychiatrist she was seeing, a friend of Sam’s from the psych department who had broken patient privilege in the hopes of helping them all communicate, but Sam had not relayed this back to Annalise: he already knew what she’d say,  _ school isn’t optional, and we all have to deal with things we don’t want to.  _

Before she could jump in with this now, Sam quickly continued, “A little under a month ago, she was still living with her family - and they were awful, but they were also the only ‘normal’ she’s ever known. She went the same school, in the same town, with the same friends, her entire life. She was uprooted, taken away from all of that, and then uprooted again. The only ‘normal’ reaction to all that is to want - no, to  _ need _ \- some time to adjust.” 

Annalise, with her degrees in law, could not rival his psych babble. He felt her shoulders sink under his hands. “I just don’t want what happened before to define her,” she said and seeing her the way he had today, stung and embittered and ready to stage an uphill battle on Bonnie’s behalf, made him certain their foster children could not have a better example of assertiveness and empathy than her. 

“It won’t. We’re not gonna let it.” He pressed a kiss to the side of her head, and she surprised him by leaning into it. “Our job right now is to be patient and take things at  _ her  _ pace, because everyone copes with trauma differently.” 

What he meant, when he said that everyone coped differently, was that Bonnie wasn’t coping like  _ her _ . He wanted to add that projecting onto the girl, trying to ‘save’ her in the way that she hadn’t been able to save herself, was only going to leave them both more messed up in the long run. 

But it was easier not to get into all of that, so Sam held back. 


	3. Making History

  1. **Making History**



She needed more books. 

At home, she’d had four shelves filled with books she loved, and a stack she hadn’t read yet by the side of her bed. Some were fairy tales she’d had all her life, with colourful illustrations of pretty princesses that she could still see now if she closed her eyes. Some were much thicker, about fantasy lands where there was magic and good always triumphed. Some were just about girls a little older than her, who didn’t quite know who they were in the beginning but always managed to figure it out in time for the happy ending, despite the fact it left her feeling strangely unsatisfied. 

But then the social worker had come for her, and it had all happened so fast: she hadn’t had time to pack all of the books she’d lost hours pouring over. “Just take what you need for tonight,” she’d been told, but when they came back the following day, her stepmother wouldn’t open the door. Eventually, she’d been given a bag of clothes that hadn’t really fit her to begin with and stuffed animals she was too old to play with, but the social worker had been brimming with accomplishment for retrieving them that she  _ had  _ to pretend that these things were the parts of her life before that she wanted to cling to, when really she would have been happy to watch them all burn in exchange for just  _ one  _ of the books that she’d had to leave behind. 

The first family she’d been sent to had a TV in every room, but no books. The mailman delivered newspapers though, and once she realised this, she made a point of getting to them before someone else could throw them in the trash. Newspapers weren’t as fun as books, but they were better than nothing. 

Now, she was living with Annalise. The only books lying around were ones about Law, or Psychology, and she didn’t understand a lot of the words in them, and she hadn’t wanted to ask in case she sounded like an idiot. 

One of the first questions her therapist - Dr Connelly - had asked her was if there was anything she missed about her life before, and she didn’t know what was the right answer - only knew that she couldn’t admit that she missed her father, even if sometimes,  _ sometimes,  _ she did, just a little bit - so instead, she said, honestly, “I miss my books.” 

Since then, Sam had taken her to the library twice. The first time, he’d signed her up for her own library card and then left her to choose from the dozens of shelves while he grabbed a coffee from the cafe next door. Later, he joked that he could have had another two coffees in the time it took her to choose three books. The second time she’d been quicker - because they’d called at the library after picking Frank up from school, and he was complaining about how he was hungry and how this was so  _ boring  _ and his whining was starting to bug her - and she’d only picked one book, which of course she’d read in no time at all. 

When Sam caught her finishing it for a second time that morning, he laughed and promised he’d bring her to library again when he got home from an appointment with a patient. 

Which was what brought her downstairs a few minutes after his car pulled into the driveway - and she’d been waiting, for the last half hour, because of all days  _ of course  _ it would be today that he was late - and she practically skipped into the kitchen, the book she needed to return tucked under her arm. She stopped short of herself when she saw only Frank - at the kitchen table, his chin pressed sullenly in his palm as he cast his eyes over his homework. 

  
“Where’s Sam?” she asked, only half-expecting an answer, since just that morning Frank had been content to pretend she didn’t exist. 

Maybe she caught him unawares or maybe he had already nodded at the door to Annalise’s office before he remembered he was ignoring her. 

With a sigh, she sat down at the table across from him. Sam could be  _ ages  _ with Annalise, and the library would be closing soon. She wondered if he’d forgotten that he promised he’d take her. 

She glanced over at Frank, who was frowning at his textbook. “What are you doing?” 

He held the textbook up for her to see the front cover:  _ 1920’s America: Making History.  _ Then, he threw it back down on the table and blew out a sigh. 

“I could help you,” she offered, and not just because this was the most positive interaction they had had since they met a week ago, but because she was  _ good  _ at History, had even gotten an A at her old school. Actually, she’d gotten A’s and B’s in everything on her last report card - except maths, she  _ sucked  _ at maths, and had just barely passed it. 

(She’d wondered if that was why Frank’s school hadn’t wanted her.) 

“I don’t need your help,” Frank snapped, just as the door to Annalise’s office opened and Sam slipped out. 

  
“Hey, hey,” he chided gently, stepping between them. “I’m sure a ‘no, thanks’ would have been suffice.” Frank folded his arms, but didn’t reply. Sam shook his head, defeated. “When you’re finished with your homework, Annalise wants you to clean your room.” 

“Whatever, I don’t even  _ care  _ about history,” he grumbled, getting up from the table and sulking out of the kitchen. 

“That boy,” Sam sighed, shaking his head some more, and internally, Bonnie agreed with his dejection. Oh, well. She’d tried. She always got a cheap kind of thrill when Sam came to her rescue with Frank - watching his face twist for a moment in hurt made her feel strangely vindicated, like maybe there was some kind of justice in the world and sometimes people got what they deserved. “Anyway. The library, right?” 

She sat up a little straighter and nodded. “Yep.” 

“Alright, just give me another minute to change out of this shirt.” He squeezed her shoulder and promised, “I’ll be right back,” and a second later she heard him on the stairs. 

From her place at the table, she looked sideways at Annalise’s office door, but she didn’t hear any noise from inside. Frank’s homework was still on the table, and she knew she shouldn’t, but she wanted to take just a  _ peak _ . Out of curiosity, because he’d been acting like it was  _ so  _ hard and she was sure he was either a total idiot, or just being dramatic. 

After a quick flick through the homework - a test - she realised it was the former. There were some of the questions that she didn’t know the answer to, but more that she did - the majority of which Frank obviously  _ didn’t _ . The answers that he did have right where spelt wrong, and she figured his teacher would mark him down for that, because her old teacher used to. 

It started out with her just correcting his spelling, because it was so easy to do and she knew he was too dumb to notice. And then it was filling in the answers he’d left blank. And then it was changing just a few of the ones he’d gotten wrong. 

When she heard footsteps on the stairs, she jumped to her feet and folded the test back the way she’d found it. She grabbed her library book from the table and met Sam in the hallway, the adrenaline from almost getting caught, and at having something to  _ do _ , giving her an edge that he mistook for eagerness and laughed off. 

 


	4. Rivalry

  1. **Rivalry**



Miss Dupre had it out for him. 

She had since day one, when she’d assigned him the seat beside Louis, the biggest loser in the class, who’d taken it as a cue to trail around the school behind Frank for the next week. In January, she sent him home with a letter about how ‘concerned’ she was that his Christmas test hadn’t gone very well and when she didn’t get a response - the letter might have stayed stuffed in the bottom of his backpack for a few weeks, just while he worked up the courage to tell Sam about it - she phoned Annalise, who confiscated his video games when he complained. Just over a month ago, Dupre had given him a detention for not handing in a homework - even though other kids had gotten away with not doing it. 

When he had come home with the deduction that he suspected his history teacher was evil, Sam told him he was going to be the death of him, while Annalise smirked. “You know, Frank,” Sam had said evenly, “sometimes, when adults are hard on you, it’s because they know you can be  _ better _ , and they want to give you a push.” 

He thought the only push Dupre wanted to give him was into a pit of fire, but he didn’t share that with foster parents. Not because he didn’t think they’d laugh - they would - but because that was the moment Bonnie had interrupted him by coming into the living room, holding a letter she wanted Annalise to post for her. 

It was the next day that Dupre had announced that they would be getting the tests they’d completed for homework back at the end of class. Frank hadn’t been nervous - so what if history wasn’t his thing? It was a dumb subject anyway - but he’d hoped the returned test wouldn’t be accompanied by another letter home. He didn’t think Sam  _ or  _ Annalise would be very amused this time, no matter how many jokes he cracked. 

When the graded paper was dropped onto his table, he had to double-check that it was really had   _ his  _ name on it. He’d never gotten a ‘B’ in History before - well, until now, obviously. 

“Amazing improvement, Frank,” Miss Dupre said sweetly, and Frank was sure her smile was fake, but his wasn’t. 

When he got home that afternoon, he eased the test out from the pages of the textbook he had used to preserve it and proudly held it out for Sam to see. He earned a high five and the widest smile that had been directed his way since before Bonnie moved in. 

“Atta boy,” Sam said, clasping his shoulder. “Wait till Annalise sees this.”

Annalise was in court today, but Sam insisted that when she came home, she’d be even more pleased than he was. It was going on the fridge for sure, Sam said. 

Frank was skimming the answers he  _ did  _ get wrong - only so when Annalise told him to later, he could say he already had without having to lie - and then he noticed something. An answer he’d left blank was filled in, and marked correct. He flipped the pages of the test, seeing this again and again, as Annalise’s office phone rang and Sam disappeared to answer it. 

He knew the handwriting, recognised it from the envelope he’d gone with Annalise to post the day before. 

Even if Sam had still been in the room, Frank didn’t think he’d have been able to stop him. He took the stairs at lightning speed and burst into the guest bedroom Bonnie was staying. 

She was cross-legged on the floor, a legal pad in her lap and a pen she’d probably stolen from his pencil case between her fingers. She let out a yelp when he came in and pulled whatever she was writing to her chest. 

“You’re  _ supposed  _ to knock,” she said sourly, and if he hadn’t been so angry at her in that moment he might have been amazed that she was actually capable of talking in more than whispers. “What do you want?” 

Well, she’d asked. “I want you to go away,” he growled. 

Bonnie frowned, as if she didn’t get this was one of the greatest insults he could work up. “That isn’t up to me.” 

“Yeah well, neither is doing  _ my  _ homework.” At this, her eyes widened in realisation. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he demanded, taking a step closer. 

“Oh.” She flinched away from him, the legal pad still pressed to her chest my her knees. “You’re mad about that?” 

“How much of a total  _ headcase  _ are you?” He stood over her, surprised when she lifted her head to look up at him, a flicker of something in his eyes he didn’t understand. “ _ Duh _ , I’m mad. I got a B, except I didn’t, because  _ you  _ cheated.” 

“I thought you’d be happy,” Bonnie said with a shrug. “You wouldn’t have passed if I hadn’t.” 

“I don’t need help from a freak like you, okay?” 

He watched a shadow of hurt cross her face, before she rolled her eyes. “Whatever - then I won’t help you anymore.” She motioned to the door, the legal pad slipping from her lap as she did so. “Just leave me alone.” 

“You can’t tell me what to do: it’s  _ my  _ house more than it is yours.” His eyes fell on the pages that had fallen between in the same moment hers did, and she might have been closer - but he was still angry, and that made him faster. He crouched down and grabbed it, expecting it to be just a dumb letter to her best friend back home, like the last one had been. He’d only taken in two words,  _ To Daddy,  _ and then, before he could read anything else, he felt her hands on his shoulders pushing him back. 

Caught off guard and not able to keep his footing, he stumbled backwards, the back of his head whacking off one of the bars from the frame at the bottom of Bonnie’s bed. It hurt instantly, a sharp scratch breaking skin to give way to a throbbing pressure as warm blood began to seep through the cut. More than hurt, he was stunned, but apparently not as shaken as Bonnie, if the tears that filled her eyes were any kind of indication. 

She leapt forward and tore the letter from his hands - which wasn’t much of a feat, given he was still in shock that she’d actually  _ pushed  _ him - and he watched as she scrambled to hide it away in one of her library books as Sam’s heavy, quick footsteps pounding up the stairs drew closer and closer. 

“What the  _ hell  _ is going on here?” He looked from one of them to the other, and when his eyes rested on Bonnie, with her quivering lip and her teary eyes, Frank knew he’d have to work quickly to show Sam who was the  _ real  _ victim. 

“She  _ shoved  _ me,” Frank insisted, surprised his voice was shaky even without needing to pretend. “I  _ told  _ you she was crazy.” 

Sam was disbelieving to say the least. It would have stung Frank to be mistrusted like this, if he did not share in the disbelief. “Bonnie?” Sam prompted, frowning. 

Frank waited for her to make it his fault. He had, after all, came into her room without knocking - the only thing Annalise had told him he was not to do, under any circumstances, and he  _ had  _ tried to read her letter to her father.

He only knew what Annalise and Sam had told him about Bonnie’s family - that it wasn’t a good place for her, and she was safer away from them. That had been before she’d moved in, and he hadn’t asked any questions because he hadn’t wanted them to think he was at all interested in the foster sister he most certainly didn’t want. 

Now, he wished he’d asked, if only because he was curious. Was she going to visit her dad, like he did, once a year? Was she allowed to send letters, when he was still being told he was too young to? 

Bonnie did not mention the letter, or the fact he was in her room without her permission. She didn’t even say that he’d stood over her and called her a freak. She didn’t say anything at all - she just pulled her knees tighter to her chest and folded her arms across them, so she could bury her head and hide from their eyes. 

“You. Downstairs.  _ Now _ ,” was all Sam said to him, before casting Bonnie one final look of disappointment that she didn’t see as they left the room. 

Frank sat on a stool in the kitchen while Sam dabbed at the cut on the back of his neck with a wipe that stung enough to make him squirm. Sam offered no comfort, no reassurance, only a heated glare and an uncomfortable silence that made Frank much more uncomfortable than the inch long wound. 

When Annalise came home, things only became more tense. She strolled into the kitchen, obviously on a high from a good day in court, and beside him, Sam stilled. He stared at her hard, even while she was poking through the fridge and suggesting take out, until she took the hint and her eyes flickered to Frank. 

“What happened to you?” she asked, and, before Frank could answer, Sam stepped in front of him - not as his defense, he knew, but so he could better challenge Annalise. 

“Exactly what you said would,” Sam replied, folding his arms across his chest. “Bonnie snapped.” 

Annalise side-stepped him to stand behind Frank. She pushed his head forward so she could eye the cut. “ _ Bonnie _ did  _ this _ ?” Frank couldn’t see her face, but he could almost swear she sounded amused. A second later, she stepped in front of him, a ‘don’t bullshit me’ expression on her face. “ _ Unprovoked _ ?” 

Frank shifted in his chair. There wasn’t much point lying - Annalise would see through it anyway. 

“That’s exactly  _ half  _ of the problem, Annalise.” If Frank had observed anything from the seven months he’d been with them, it was that Sam only called Annalise by her name - and not ‘Annie,’ his own special nickname - when he was really mad at her. “You told me this was natural sibling rivalry.” 

Annalise rolled her eyes. “Come on Sam. That’s exactly what it is.” 

“No it isn’t!” Sam banged his fist against the kitchen counter, and Frank jumped in spite of himself. Annalise wasn’t alarmed though. She just stared Sam out. If anything, she looked bored. “She is upstairs  _ crying  _ and he is down here  _ bleeding _ \- this isn’t normal, Annalise. This isn’t anywhere close to normal, and I’m  _ done  _ with it.” 

The hair on Frank’s arms stood up at this, and he felt his entire body tense up. Done, as in, done with  _ them _ ? 

_ We can be good,  _ Frank wanted to say,  _ I can be nice to her if you just give me another chance -  _ but there was a lump in his throat forming and it was already enough of a blow to his ego that he’d been pushed over by a  _ girl,  _ without starting to cry too. 

“Are you happy now?” Sam fired at Annalise next. She scoffed, and he motioned to Frank, who felt his cheeks begin to burn. “You wanted her to roar - well, she sure did that.” 

_ It wasn’t even like that,  _ Frank thought.  _ She didn’t push me  _ that  _ hard, and I only fell because I was crouching and I lost my balance.  _

But he was only crouching because he was invading her privacy. 

Bonnie might have started it, with the stupid history test, but he was older by almost a whole year - and so even if he didn’t think it was fair, he was supposed to have been the one to finish it. 

Then Sam and Annalise wouldn’t be fighting, and Sam wouldn’t have said ‘ _ I’m done _ .’ 

Annalise didn’t respond to Sam directly. She simply stepped into the hall and yelled up the stairs for Bonnie to come down.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked, exasperated, and Annalise turned to him with a shrug. 

“Handling things, because obviously a petty scrap between two eleven year-olds is too much for you.”

Frank was surprised, but relieved, when Bonnie appeared in the doorway like a ghost, her head ducked and her cheeks red from crying and her hands squirreled away in her sleeves. 

“Come here,” Annalise commanded, pointing to the space she made in front of Frank as she stepped aside. 

With obvious reluctance, Bonnie sulked over, still not lifting her head to look at any of them. When she was close enough to touch, Frank watched her hunch her shoulders and listened to her sniff miserably. 

“When I get to three, you’re  _ both  _ going to apologise -  _ at the same time _ . You’re both smart enough to understand that, right?” Annalise’s question was rhetorical, and they both knew it. “Great. One. Two. Three.” 

There was a long pause which was made to feel even longer by Sam’s terse intake of breath. Frank stared at Bonnie, and when her eyes finally flicked up to him - free of tears, now - it was as if he felt her smile before his own. 

Annalise found their mutual silence amusing too, although he knew she tried hard not to show it. “Real cute. Now, let’s try that again, shall we? One. Two.  _ Three _ .” 

Bonnie said it first, technically, but he jumped in quickly, his voice louder, so he didn’t think anyone noticed. 

“Great. Now don’t let ...  _ whatever happened earlier _ happen again,” Annalise ordered, dry again, even as she continued with, “or else I’m setting up a tent in the backyard and you can kill each other out there. Got it?”

They both nodded, and then they were sent to their rooms to ‘cool off’- which Frank knew meant Annalise and Sam were going to fight, and they wanted them out of the way.    
  



	5. Unbreakable

  1. **Unbreakable**



They were having a boys night in, just him and Frank, while the girls spent the evening shopping. Annalise had insisted that Bonnie needed new clothes and although Sam didn’t see the problem with the clothes she had, he knew better than to argue. Besides, he’d been more than happy to order some pizza and rent a few movies to pass the time. 

He figured that after the recent fiasco, he probably needed some time alone with Frank, and Annalise probably needed some time alone with Bonnie. He just hoped they were now, finally, on the same page. 

As far as he knew, no one had spoken about it since it happened. He’d tried to broach the subject with Annalise in bed that night, but she’d rolled over and shut the light off. He’d suggested they call the kids social workers, because surely they had more experience dealing with these things than he and Annalise, but she’d turned on him then, demanding to know if he  _ wanted  _ them taken away; if he wanted Frank to turn to the streets like his father, if he wanted Bonnie to be handed off to another pedophile. 

“If they don’t have us, then they fall through the cracks,” she pointed out, and he knew she wasn’t wrong, but that didn’t keep him from feeling like they’d figuratively bitten off more than they could chew. 

It was the next night, when he found the kids in Annalise’s downstairs office an hour past bedtime, cross-legged on the floor in front of her desk in their pajamas, listening intently to her relay stories from her day in court; it was two days later, as he watched Frank helping Annalise with dinner, his wife humming to the radio in between directing Frank’s sticky hands. It was her braiding Bonnie’s hair after a bath, because, according to Annalise, Bonnie made a mess of it when it was wet, but Sam really suspected it was because it made Annalise feel needed.  

He knew now that there was no going back. What he didn’t know was what he was so afraid of losing - the kids or Annalise. For so long after they lost their baby, he felt like his wife was gone too. 

“This guy is pretty cool,” Frank noted, as he raised a fistful of popcorn to his mouth as they sat on opposite ends of the sofa. “Being indestructible is like, the best thing a superhero can be.” 

Sam wanted to challenge that. He wanted Frank to see that being brave or loyal or selfless was a much more admirable characteristic. But he also remembered what it was like to be Frank’s age, and taken with the prospect of a seemingly ordinary guy turning out to be something extraordinary, defying odds and living a life filled with adrenaline and excitement. He knew that, all things considered, this was a perfectly healthy obsession for a young boy. 

So he simply said, “I dunno about that. Invisibility is pretty cool, too.” 

The movie was ‘Unbreakable,’ about Bruce Willis realising he could physically withstand impacts and being trained to use these powers for good. 

When the credits rolled, he watched Frank reach for the remote. “Want me to set up the next one?” he asked, and Sam saw this as the closest to an opportunity he was going to get. 

“In a minute.” He took the remote from Frank’s hands and pressed the standby button. “I want us to talk first. Man to man.” 

This was obviously not what Frank wanted to hear. He sank back into the sofa. “Am I in trouble?” 

“No.” Sam frowned. “Why would you be in trouble?” 

Frank’s only response was a moody shrug and a grunted, “‘Cause.” 

“Because what?” He probed, although he knew. “I know things haven’t been easy the last few weeks. It’s been a big adjustment for all of us. Nobody expected you to just automatically be okay with it.” He paused, and put his arm across the back of the couch while offering Frank a weak smile. “We got pretty used to it just being the three of us, didn’t we?” 

Frank nodded, and didn’t meet Sam’s eye. “I liked it like that,” he said, sounding small. 

Maybe he felt betrayed by them adding Bonnie to the family without his approval, or like he wasn’t enough for them. Sam supposed it was easier for him to take out all the hurt he felt on Bonnie than it was to talk about it with him and Annalise. Maybe that was more Sam’s own fault than it even was Frank’s. 

“Me too, buddy.” Sam ruffled Frank’s hair, and for the first time in the last seven months, he didn’t duck away. In a softer tone, Sam added,“But I also like it the way it is now, and I bet if you gave it half a chance you’d like it too.” Frank didn’t seem convinced, so Sam tried a new tactic. “I have a sister, so I know that relationship ... it doesn’t always come easy. But I also know that Bonnie, like you, hasn’t really a lot of people she can trust. I know that makes it even harder for both of you.” This, at least, made Frank lift his head. “She could use someone to look up to, and I think you’d do a damn good job if you set your mind to it.” 

“I guess,” Frank murmured, and then he paused. “Wait, does this mean I have to apologise again?” 

“Not apologise exactly, but you could try and talk to her,” Sam said. He wasn’t surprised that the suggestion had Frank pulling a face, but he was surprised at what came next. 

“Like… a truce?” 

“Pretty much.” He’d take what he could get. “How’s that sound?” 

“Fine, but if she gets all crazy again - ” 

Sam let his hand fall on Frank’s shoulder firmly. “That’s another thing - stop calling her that. It’s not nice.” 

“If she  _ isn’t  _ crazy, then why does she have to see so many Doctors?” 

Because all the books and new clothes in the world could not undo the eleven years Bonnie had had before, without them; because all their money could not buy her back what had been stolen from her; because if she was talking to someone else, a  _ professional _ , about all the horrible things that had been done to her, then that meant they were in the clear. 

“That isn’t any of your business right now,” Sam said, instead. “But you quit throwing that word around, alright? You both act damn crazy, if you ask me, and that’s the last I wanna hear about it.” 


	6. Obsession

  1. **Obsession**



Hannah arrived, unannounced, on a Saturday while Annalise was making breakfast.

Sam had gone out for a jog and Frank, who, she had to admit, had a natural knack for cooking, was helping her with the eggs. When the doorbell rang, she turned to Bonnie - silently sitting at the table with her legs tucked under her and, as per damn usual, her head stuck in a book.

“Can you get that?” Annalise had taken to giving Bonnie mundane tasks - when they were grocery shopping, she split the list in half and told Bonnie she’d meet her at the checkout; when her new clients came to the house, she had her bring them out tea and coffee; when she came downstairs the previous day with another letter for one of the friends she’d left behind, Annalise drove her to the post office and told her she’d wait in the car. 

Even if she wasn’t in school right now, Annalise was going to make damn sure she got an education in socialisation. 

Biting her lip, Bonnie slowly closed her book and did as she was told. Annalise turned back to the stove, but she noticed Frank gravitating to the door by the hallway: she wasn’t sure if he was genuinely curious about who was at the door, or just eager to watch Bonnie fuck something up. 

Annalise expected it was a mailman, with a package one of them would need to sign for, or a weekend clerk from the courthouse with papers for her. At a stretch, it might be a desperate client. Certainly nothing Bonnie couldn’t handle. 

Then she heard a familiar high-pitched, “Oh, well,  _ hello  _ there!” undercut by a groan from Frank, and she felt an overwhelming sense of dread. 

She shut off the stove and made her way into the hallway, noticing first that Hannah had a suitcase at her feet, and second that she had Bonnie in her arms. Her face was hidden by Hannah’s embrace, but Annalise could imagine she was uncomfortable. 

“Hannah,” she said, aware of how dry she sounded but also aware it would turn Hannah’s attention from Bonnie to her. “Sam didn’t mention you were stopping by.” 

Sure enough, Hannah released Bonnie, who wasted no time at all backing away. Before Annalise could even blink, Bonnie was effectively hiding herself behind Frank. 

“I can’t  _ believe  _ Sam didn’t mention it,” Hannah said, mock-surprised, and it might have only been a few minutes, but Annalise already wanted to hit her. “As soon as he told me about Bonnie I said I just  _ had  _ to get off from work and come down and visit. I couldn’t wait to meet the new member of the family!”

Annalise was sure she heard a small sound of panic escape from Bonnie, like maybe she thought she was going to get another hug.

Before Annalise could get another word in, Hannah was beckoning the kids into the living room -  _ her  _ living room. “Come on you two,” she said sweetly, in a way that had them sharing a look of apprehension, “I brought presents!” 

Presents turned out to be a collector's model aeroplane and a pair of socks for Frank and a sparkly headband and a colouring book for Bonnie. Annalise sure had to give them both credit - they were nothing but polite, and gave the impression of being entirely grateful, even if Frank had no interest whatsoever in planes and Bonnie was too old for a colouring book. 

By the time Sam finally returned from his jog, Hannah was boring the kids half to death with stories about her most recent vacation to Cancun. 

“Hannah!” Sam sounded happy to see his sister, if a little shocked. Abandoning her story - much to Frank’s relief, Annalise noted - Hannah got up from the couch to hug him. The smile on his face disappeared when he met Annalise’s eyes over her shoulder. “You should have called,” he said, and Annalise thought  _ yeah, so I could be on the first flight out of here right now.  _ “I would have picked you up from the airport.” 

“Oh, there’s no need for that. I know how busy you are.” 

Annalise couldn’t help but snort at this. Sam? Busy? He’d taken a leave of absence from his patients so he could home-school Bonnie, despite the fact they could afford to pay someone who actually knew what they were doing. 

When Hannah cast her a dark look - because how  _ dare  _ Annalise have an opinion about her own husband and his work ethic - Sam eased the tension by asking what everyone wanted for breakfast. 

“We had eggs,” Frank said, unhelpfully. “But they’re probably cold now.” 

“Pancakes, then.” Sam decided. “Leave your bags here, Hannah. I’ll take them upstairs once I fix us something to eat.” 

While Hannah praised her brother for using their father’s recipe - for  _ pancakes _ , seriously - condescendingly asked Frank if he’d cooked before he came to live them, and badgered Bonnie about wearing a jumper when it was almost summer, Annalise went into her office with even bothering to formulate an excuse, locked the door and poured herself a glass of vodka.

It was sometime after breakfast that she heard a small rap on her office door. If she hadn’t thought that it was Bonnie - Frank’s knock was always much heavier - she wouldn’t have opened it. 

She wished she hadn’t when she saw Sam standing there. She glanced past him to the kitchen, which was empty but for the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. 

“Hannah went next door to catch up with the Cullens,’” Sam explained, knowing she didn’t care enough to ask. 

Oh, of  _ course  _ she had. It was of the utmost importance to Hannah that the neighbours liked her more than Annalise. 

Annalise rolled her eyes and turned away from Sam. “You let her drag Frank and Bonnie with her?” 

“No,” Sam said. “I sent them upstairs to tidy their bedrooms - well, Frank to tidy his room. Bonnie just needs to change the bedsheets before Hannah gets back so she can get unpacked.” 

“She’s not staying here,” Annalise said firmly, sitting back in her office chair.

Sam rubbed his forehead, but did not seem surprised. He’d known this was coming. “Annalise, she  _ always  _ stays here.” 

“Exactly,” Annalise bit back, and then she shook her head. “And that was when we had a guest room.” 

“Bonnie doesn’t mind - ”

“ - Well  _ I _ do.” In truth, it wasn’t just that Hannah was insufferable, or that watching the way she was with Sam - all old family anecdotes and unearned praise - made Annalise nauseous. If she thought it was only for a few days, she could just find another case to keep her busy and out of the house. It was the issue of the kids: Frank, who Hannah had ignored the last time she’d visited because she’d thought Sam and Annalise should be doing IVF to have their own child instead of raising someone else’s; and Bonnie, who Hannah had fawned over on the couch like she was a shiny new doll she could dress up. 

Voicing this to Sam was futile. “Oh come on, Annie. Don’t you think it would be good for them to see an example of - ”

“- of  _ what _ , Sam? Of a healthy sibling dynamic?” She couldn't help herself - she laughed out loud. “Any wonder you’re so fixated on their relationship - you’re so used to Hannah’s obsession with you that you think it’s  _ normal _ .” 

“Now you’re just being ridiculous.” 

“No,  _ you’re  _ being ridiculous if you think I’m going to put Bonnie out of her bedroom so  _ Hannah  _ can stay there.” 

Sam’s bright idea of a compromise was to set up a tent in the backyard, enamouring both of the kids in a way that had them surrendering their bedrooms like it was a competition. Annalise scoffed at the idea, until Hannah came back from the neighbours and dusted off the old record player and dug out her Elvis records and Sam started pouring glasses of wine. 

She found Bonnie and Frank lying inside the tent, side-by-side and sharing the colouring book Hannah had brought and Frank’s colouring pencils. They weren’t speaking to each other except to bicker over who was to blame for running down the leads so quickly, but they both lit up when she crawled in beside them. 


	7. Eternity

  1. **Eternity**



The drive was always the part he hated the most. 

Sam would try to make idle conversation for the first ten minutes or so - relatively natural chat about sports or school that would somehow still seem forced - and then he would give up, give way to silence that would dominate most of the next forty-five minutes. 

It would seem so long when he had his pressed against the window, the radio only a dull distraction, until around the time they’d pass the city limit sign and then his stomach would start to twist itself into knots and he’d feel his knees weaken and one of them would even shake, so he’d have to shift a lot to keep Sam from noticing. 

Sam would have to show the visitation letter they’d gotten in the mail to a guard at the gate, and then they’d been told to park. The parking lot was almost always empty, save a few police cars. That always made Frank feel strange inside, sad even - like he was alone. 

Except he wasn’t. Right about this time, Sam would shut off the engine and turn to him. 

“You okay buddy?” he’d say, and today was no exception. 

“Sure.” Frank closed his eyes for a second and rested his head against the seat, waiting for what was certain to come. 

“Hey, you know it’s okay if you’ve changed mind,” Sam said, sure enough, and Frank, like always, did not allow himself to even consider the idea.

“No.” He opened his eyes and sat forward, all the while wiping his sweaty palms on the sides of his jeans. “I wanna see him.” 

“Alright then.” Sam always looked disappointed as they would get out of the car, and Frank never understood why. 

Jail was grey. That was the only way Frank could think to describe it: _g_ __rey_.  _ All long corridors and steel doors and when security would frisk search him, he’d instinctively look to Sam, who was watching with arms folded and a smile that was supposed to be reassuring. 

When it came time, Sam put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze. “Alright, buddy. I’ll be right out here when you’re finished.” 

Frank already knew that, but he liked hearing it anyway, and he suspected that was why Sam continued to say it. 

He had a little while to wait alone in the room, and he passed the time watching the clock on the wall. The ticking made him nervous, so he tried to ignore it and just watch the hands move. 

When the door opened, he held his breath. His father always had a different haircut or style of facial hair, and Frank worried that someday, he’d come to visit and he wouldn’t be able to recognise him at all. 

Today his head was shaved, and he was growing a beard. His crooked smile was familiar though, and it made something tighten in Frank’s chest the same way it had every other time it had been directed at him.

“Dad!” They couldn’t hug, but Frank sat up straight in his chair and felt his anxiety evaporate when his dad sat down across from him, and so it hardly mattered at all that they were surrounded by guards. 

“Well hey, champ.” He watched his father eye him up and down. “You sure are gettin’ taller.” 

Frank felt pride stirring within him, a warmth under his skin that left his face flushed. He  _ had  _ gotten taller, and he’d hoped his dad would notice. 

The light above them flickered on, the sunlight filtering through the barred windows not enough, and it was then that Frank noticed the dark shadow around his father’s left eye.

“Did you get into a fight?” he asked, frowning. 

His Dad shifted in the plastic chair. “Oh, it ain’t nothin’. You wanna see the other guy.” Frank was pretty sure he  _ didn’t.  _ “So. You still like school?” 

Frank shrugged, uneasy by the swift change in subject and having grown too used to Annalise and Sam’s bluntness. “I guess. I get my report card on Friday.” 

“I bet you’ll do great.” Another crooked smile, and Frank noticed he was missing a tooth. Had that been another fight? He shivered. “My son the genius, huh?” 

“I might not do so well in History.” He’d had another test last week - this time in class, so he couldn’t have asked for Bonnie’s help even if he’d wanted to. 

When he’d warned Annalise that he might not do so well, he’d gotten a disappointed sigh that made him feel impossibly small and a lecture about paying more attention in class. Later that night, she told him she’d put in a call to a friend who did private tutoring, and Frank had felt like an idiot, but he had felt less alone. 

“Well that don’t matter,” was his dad’s response. “Only damn history that matters is your own.” He motioned to the tattoos up and down both of his arms with a smirk. “Look at me. I’m a walking history book.” 

Frank loved looking at his Dad’s tattoos. There were just so many - tribal patterns, names in cursive, pin-up girls, all blackly bleeding into each other. He wanted to know the meaning behind every single one of them, but he knew they didn’t have long enough for that. 

So he just asked about his favourite: the one on his father’s right bicep, a snake in the shape of a figure eight turned on it’s side. 

“That old thing?” His dad laughed and touched his fingertips to the symbol. “I was a little older than you, and seein’ a girl I thought I was crazy about. She wanted me to prove myself, like she didn’t believe I could only love just her. So I went to my buddy’s tattoo shop and told him I wanted somethin’ that said ‘I love you’ but that wouldn’t kill my street cred, y’know?” 

Frank didn’t know, not really. There was a girl in his class, Justine, and she sometimes smiled across the room at him when he they were with their separate group of friends. She was pretty, and he thought he could maybe like her, but he didn’t know her enough to love her. 

“So my buddy did this. Apparently it means ‘eternity’ or somethin’ like that. So it was like me sayin’ I would love her for an eternity.” He sat back in his seat, still smirking. “She thought it was cool. Cool enough to run away with me.” 

“What happened to her?” Frank asked, genuinely curious.

“I got busted for having drugs in my car.” This was said nonchalantly, as if it were nothing but a flat joke. “You can’t elope if you’re wearing an ankle bracelet.” 

“Oh.” Frank wasn’t quite sure what he’d expected. He wasn’t aware he could have lower expectations for his father than he already did. 

“Hey, maybe I’ll hit her up when I get outta here.” He winked at Frank. “When I have my own place for me and you. She could come and live with us too, God willin’ and if she’s single.” 

Frank had heard the same kind of promise his whole life.  _ When I get outta here, when I’m a free man, when I have you back… _ except nothing ever changed, and then his dad would go back to jail for something else. 

He wanted to believe that this time was different. That in a year or two from now, he’d have a home with his Dad, but if he’d learned anything from history, it was that it was likely to repeat itself. 


	8. Gateway

  1. **Gateway**



Her days revolved around the mailman. 

He’d come around nine, after Annalise had left for court or while she was busy in the office with clients and when Sam would be in the kitchen reading the morning newspaper. It worked perfectly for Bonnie - this meant she was free to sit on the stairs and wait without being questioned or pitied.

At least, that was how it had been when Frank was at school - he’d be gone by eight-thirty during the week, and would sleep until around eleven on weekends. Now he was on summer break, she never could quite predict when he’d wake up. 

More than once he had passed her on the stairs, squinting with sleep still in his eyes. He did not ask what she was doing, and strangely, she didn’t think he’d mentioned it to Sam or Annalise. 

Her therapist was the one who ruined it all. Dr Connelly was supposed to see her every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, but because she was going on a vacation with her family next week, she’d insisted on seeing Bonnie for an extra few hours in the morning. Bonnie knew, as she was listening to Sam and the receptionist arrange the appointment, that it would mean she’d miss the mail. 

In the four weeks she’d been sending letters, she had yet to receive even just one reply. She’d told herself the chances of a reply coming on the one morning that she wasn’t home was slim to none. Whose luck was that bad? 

Hers, as it turned out. She arrived home with Sam to find Annalise waiting in the hallway, her hands on her hips, a familiar envelope in her hand. Bonnie felt herself shrink. 

“What the hell is this?” Annalise demanded, but Bonnie knew she wasn’t actually after an answer - after all, it was obvious what it was: an unopened envelope with Bonnie’s father’s name on it. 

She hadn’t known where to send it, because her social worker hadn’t been able to tell her what would happen to her father. She’d asked Annalise only once, and her reply had been, “I will make sure he is punished for what he did to you,” in a tone that implied that was the end of it, and Bonnie had been too afraid to ask her again. 

She thought he might be in jail, but which one? There was the possibility that he was in a hospital, but she didn’t know the address of the one nearest her hometown. For all she knew, he could be back at her old house, back with her stepmother, but what if they’d moved?

So she’d sent the letter to where he worked, hoping his boss, Daniel, would know what she didn’t and could pass it onto him. Gateway Inc. was the office building where her dad had worked as a janitor for as long as she could remember. He’d come in early and get all his work done, so by the time she came by after school, he could take her downstairs to the basement, where his storeroom was. Sometimes, Daniel or even one of the guys from the offices on the second floor would stop by her father’s storeroom when their shifts were done, but a lot of the time, it was just her and her dad.

She might not have had pleasant memories of Gateway Inc., but it was one of the things from her previous life she remembered best. 

She hadn’t wanted to put a return address on the letter, had avoided doin g it each other time, but on this occasion the lady in the post office had told her she should. Now, she felt her cheeks burn. How could she have been so stupid? 

“I’m sorry,” she said, instinctively, although she did not quite know what for. 

Sam took the letter from Annalise and examined it. “You sent this?” he said to Bonnie, incredulously, like he didn’t want to believe it could possibly be true. 

She ducked her head but didn’t speak. Sam’s heavy sigh was a disappointed one, and it made her chest tighten. She didn’t  _ mean  _ to upset them. 

“What were you  _ thinking _ ?” Annalise exploded, and Bonnie couldn’t help but flinch at the sudden loudness of her voice. 

“ _ Annie _ ,” Sam said, steadily. Bonnie felt his hand on her shoulder, but because she didn’t see it coming, she flinched again. It was unconscious - she didn’t mean to, but when Sam’s hand slipped off her shoulder, stung, she realised he did not know that. “It’s probably just something her therapist recommended. Sometimes letter writing can help trauma victims recover-” 

_ Trauma victim?  _ Is that was she was to them? She couldn’t make out the pattern on the rug anymore around the tears clouding her vision. 

“ - then she’s fired,” Annalise interrupted, bluntly. “I told you all this therapy bullshit was only going to make things worse.” 

“Oh, so you’re against therapy now?” 

“Well evidently it’s not the place for an impressionable  _ child _ . I knew it would open more wounds than it would close. I fucking  _ told  _ you -”

Annalise continued, but Bonnie couldn’t hear it anymore. She covered her ears. “It wasn’t Dr Connelly,” she said, her voice low enough that maybe they wouldn’t hear her. “It was just me.” 

Except they did. Sam turned to her, and when she looked up, miserably, he had an expression on his face she thought might be horror. “Bonnie,” he said, shaking his head. “Why?” 

_ Because he’s my father; because I miss him, and I know he misses me. Because I want him to write back.  _ Saying any of this out loud would only make them angrier. They would think she was disgusting and sick and that she’d liked what her Dad used to do to her, and then they wouldn’t want her anymore, and what would happen to her then? 

The thought made tears fall fast down her cheeks. Maybe something  _ was  _ wrong with her; maybe Frank was right, and she was  _ was  _ a freak. She looked to Annalise, half-frightened of what kind of expression she’d be met with, but Annalise wasn’t even looking at her anymore. She’d turned away, turned her back. Up until that moment, Bonnie hadn’t thought it was possible to feel your heart break.

“Go to your room,” Annalise said, her voice too even, too empty. Sam tried to interrupt,  but Annalise’s order was final. “Go upstairs,” she repeated, and this time, Bonnie recognised it as a command and scrambled up the stairs, holding in her sobs until her bedroom door was shut behind her.

In her bedroom, she tucked herself under the window sill - she was still small enough to fit - and pulled her knees to her chest. 

She didn’t know how long she sat like that, only that by the time a knock on the door came, she was breathless and her throat hurt from all the crying. 

“Come in,” she croaked, hoping it was Sam up to tell her that he wasn’t mad at her for flinching away from his touch, or Annalise to apologise for shouting. She was wholeheartedly disappointed to see Frank. “What?” she tried to snap, but it came out more like a wail. 

She buried her head in her arm, and after a long moment of silence, she looked up, sure Frank had to have gone: except he was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of her. When their eyes met, he frowned. “Are you okay?” he asked. 

“They hate me,” she cried, and it killed her to say this to him, of all people, because surely that was  _ exactly  _ what he wanted, but right now she couldn’t push the self-pity aside for long enough to pretend, even for spite’s sake. 

“Sometimes I think that too,” Frank admitted, his fingers brushing against her bedroom rug idly, “but they don’t. They wouldn’t keep us if they did.” 

“They might not want to keep me anymore,” Bonnie mumbled.

Frank, wide-eyed and serious, shifted closer to her. “I’ll talk to them if you want me to.” 

She didn’t think for even a second that would actually work, but the offer surprised her. “Why would you do that? For me?” she asked. Didn’t he want Annalise and Sam to give her back to the social worker so he could have them to himself again? Wasn’t that what he’d wanted all along? 

Frank shrugged, but looked away. “I dunno. I guess I owe you. I mean, you did help me pass History.”

She was confused. Hadn’t that been the  _ wrong  _ thing? It didn’t matter really, she supposed. What mattered is he was offering to help her. He held his fist out to her, like a superhero, and it took her just a beat before she met his with her own - a fist bump, a peace offering, a wordless, ‘i got your back.’ 

The next knock at the door made her jump - the security of this thing with Frank shattered. “Bonnie?” Annalise’s voice called, firm but not angry like before. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and tried to sound strong when she told her to come in. 

Annalise had the envelope in her hand. She took one look at Frank and raised her eyebrow. “What are you doing in here?” 

“He knocked,” Bonnie sniffed, helpfully. 

Annalise looked from one of them to the other, and then rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Frank, go… do something else, I need to talk to Bonnie.” 

Frank didn’t move. He looked to Bonnie instead. “You okay?” he said again, and she knew what he was really saying:  _ I won’t leave until you tell me to.  _ It made the hair on her arms and neck stand up on ends. Was this what it felt like to have someone protect you? 

She answered with a nod and by meeting his eyes.  _ I don’t want to get you in trouble, too,  _ she would say, if she could speak, if Annalise wasn’t standing over them.

Frank seemed to understand. He got to his feet and turned around to leave, giving Bonnie a small smile that she thought might be supposed to reassure her as he left. 

Annalise did not ask questions about when they suddenly became so close - honestly, Bonnie was not sure she herself knew. She simply sat down on the edge of Bonnie’s bed. “Come here,” she said, patting the space beside her. 

Bonnie did as she was told. When Annalise held the envelope out for her, she ducked her head but did not take it. Annalise tossed it on the bed. 

“I’m not mad,” Annalise said, and Bonnie knew it was a lie. She must have looked skeptical, because Annalise relented with a sigh. “Well, I  _ am -  _ but not about  _ that _ ,” she motioned to the letter again. “I’m mad that you didn’t tell me. I thought you were writing to your friend.” 

“I was.” Keisha, her best - and, if she was honest,  _ only  _ \- friend since kindergarten, was most of her other letters had been for. In Bonnie’s mind, there was a perfectly rational reason why Keisha hadn’t replied to a single one of them, and it was that her mother must have had to move again for work and the letters hadn’t been forwarded to their new home yet. It most certainly could not have been her biggest fear: that Keisha had found someone else, a better friend who didn’t have to leave without saying goodbye, and forgotten all about Bonnie. 

“But you also wrote one to your father.” Annalise was disappointed now, like Sam had been, and that didn’t scare Bonnie like the anger did, but it hurt even more. “I don’t want to read it. It’s yours, and it’s private, and I wouldn’t do that to you. But I do need you to tell me what you thought was going to happen if he got the letter.” 

“I don’t know.” Bonnie shifted, uncomfortable under the weight of Annalise’s gaze. “I just thought that maybe he’d write back.” 

“And you would want that?” 

She knew that she was supposed to say no, but lying was supposedly what Annalise had been the angriest about in the first place. “I guess.” Something inside of her broke, a floodgate that was keeping fresh tears at bay. In a second, she was crying again. “I don’t want to go back there. I  _ promise _ , I don’t want to go back. I just want him to get better.” She looked up through her tears at Annalise, and silently pleaded with her to understand. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” 

“Men like your father don’t get better, Bonnie.” Annalise’s voice was hard, and when her hand came up to hold Bonnie’s chin, she didn’t seem to notice or care that Bonnie was uncomfortable under her touch. “They get worse. Which is why I need you to promise me that you won’t try and contact him again.” Bonnie blinked away enough to be able to see Annalise clearly, and noticed, with a slight touch of horror, that Annalise’s own eyes were rimmed with the beginnings of tears too. 

Maybe she did understand. If anyone ever did, it was Annalise. 

“Do you understand?” she said, her thumb still pressed against Bonnie’s chin, and she nodded numbly, knowing she didn’t have another choice. “Bonnie. I need you to say it.” 

“I promise,” she mumbled, and when Annalise continued to look at her, expectantly, she added, “I promise I won’t try to contact him anymore.” 

“Good.” Annalise dropped her hand and got to her feet. Only now Annalise had let go of her, did Bonnie realise how firm her grip had been. She rubbed her chin instinctively as Annalise picked up the letter. “Do you want to keep this?” 

Bonnie shook her head quickly. “No.” 

It was tossed into the trash can in her bedroom by Annalise, and although Bonnie knew she could fish it out again if she wanted to, she knew she wouldn’t. 

She had too much to lose. 


	9. Death

  1. **Death**



Frank had been to two funerals in his life. 

The first was his mother's, and he’d only been three at the time, so he really didn’t remember it.

The second was that of his paternal grandmother - the one who’d raised him after his mother died and while his dad was in and out of jail - and it had been only two years ago. He remembered that day very vividly. The ground around his grandmother’s grave had been soft, and damp from the rain the night before. It had been a cold morning, the kind of cold that stung his cheeks and made him wish he’d had a coat that would go with the oversized suit he’d had to borrow from his older cousin. He’d spent most of the day being hugged by extended family members and wondering what would happen to him now.

The third funeral he attended was different. For one, he did not know the deceased, nor was he in any way related to them. It was an aunt of Annalise’s whose death had come as a shock, and he was just here because Sam was visiting a friend out of town and had refused to come home to watch him and Bonnie, so Annalise had had no choice but to take them with her to Memphis.

Not only did he not know the dead lady, but he didn’t know anyone else either. He’d never met anyone from Annalise’s side of the family before, and after just a half hour in her mother’s kitchen after the service, he understood why. 

She took one look at him and Bonnie and quickly looked to Annalise, visibly annoyed. “Dammit Anna-Mae, you’re gonna tell me the orphanage only had white ones?”

She continued by blaming ‘that damn white husband of yours who thinks he is somebody’ and berating Annalise - or, as she called her, Anna-Mae - for not caring about ‘the plenty of babies round here that need lookin after.’ 

At some point during all of this, another woman came into the kitchen and introduced herself as Shanice, Annalise’s cousin. “Why don’t you two come and meet everybody else?” she said, and they were both relieved. 

As it turned out, however, ‘everybody else’ didn’t seem to want to meet  _ them.  _ They ended up in the yard outside with a hoard of other children they didn’t know, who ignored their attempts at conversation. 

“Do you think Annalise is sad?” Bonnie asked him, while the others played around them. 

The thought had crossed Frank’s mind, too. Annalise had been silent almost the entire drive here, and he’d thought then that maybe she was upset - he had been, when his grandmother had died, after all - but then he met her mother, and now he figured she’d just been dreading having to deal with her. 

“Maybe.” Frank shrugged. “Everyone’s always sad at a funeral. That’s kinda the point.” 

“Some people weren’t sad. Some of them were telling jokes.” Bonnie was frowning. Frank figured that most of the jokes were probably about  _ them,  _ but he decided against sharing this with Bonnie. 

“You’ve never been to a funeral before?” 

She shook her head. “I don’t know anyone who died.” 

“My mom and grandma died,” he said, although he wasn’t sure why he was telling her this. “I don’t remember if anyone made jokes.” 

He could feel Bonnie watching him from the space beside him on the doorstep. “Oh.” When he turned to meet her eyes, she looked away, a blush rising on her cheeks at being caught staring. “I’m sorry that they died.” 

“Yeah,” was all Frank could think to say, kicking dirt on the ground - half-heartedly, because there’d be hell to pay if he ruined his new shoes.  

There was a long pause, and then Bonnie was talking, her voice light as she smoothed out the creases on her dress with her palm. “I used to think my mom was dead. She left when I was a baby, and I was always so sure that if she could have, she’d have come back for me.” 

“How do you know that isn’t true?” 

“Social services tracked her down and she signed me over to them,” Bonnie said, folding her arms together in her lap and holding them close to her. “She just didn’t want me, I guess.” 

“I think  _ my  _ mom just wanted drugs.” He was nine when his Dad told him, during a brief stint home from jail, that his mother had OD’d. Just thinking about it again brought an image to his mind of the mother he couldn’t remember laying on the floor of a tiny living room, her skin too pale and peppered with needle marks. He wasn’t sure if this was an actual memory, or just something his nightmares had worked up. Either way, he tried to shake it from his thoughts and straightened up, wiping his damp palms on his trousers. “Sam and Annalise wanted kids though.” 

“Not just kids,” Bonnie said, with a small smile. “Us.” 

“Right?” Frank motioned to the house behind them. “Who cares if  _ they  _ don’t like us?” 

Bonnie’s smile slipped. “Annalise, maybe?” 

“Nah.” He wasn’t just saying it to reassure her. Frank shook his head because he genuinely believed what came next, “Annalise doesn’t care what anyone thinks.” 

And he was right. A few minutes later, Annalise came out, about ready to yell their names when she almost tripped over them. 

“We’re going home,” she commanded, and they both rose, Bonnie brushing the dirt from the back of her skirt as she did so. Frank followed Annalise back through the house, unable to hide the smugness he felt.  _ See?  _ He wanted to say to Bonnie, as they slid into the backseat together, and Annalise started the car, her mother’s house soon to be a blur in the distance, _ I told you she’d pick us.  _


	10. Opportunities

  1. **Opportunities**



The house was dark and still when she emerged from her office.

She didn’t know what time it was, only that it was late and the kids were long in bed. Sam was sitting at the kitchen table, and it took her a moment to realise he was waiting for _her_.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, only half-interested as she set about making herself a fresh cup of coffee.

“You missed it,” he said, blankly, as he rose to his feet. When she turned to look at him, visibly confused, his jaw tightened. “Frank’s baseball game, Annie. You missed it.”

Oh. Right. _That_.

Frank wasn’t a baseball kind of kid, but almost as soon as he’d come to live with them, Sam had insisted they needed to have him join some sort of sport, so he could learn teamwork and structure and rules - three things Frank was not good at respecting. He’d loathed his first few practices, and loathed them even more for making him continue with it, but then he started to make friends on the team, and suddenly it wasn’t such a chore anymore.

She’d known the game was this week even without Sam reminding her. Just the day before, she’d watched Frank in the backyard, practising his pitch with Bonnie. Annalise could tell he was looking forward to the game because there were high-fives and laughing between the two and, at one point, Frank had even stood behind Bonnie and righted her hands on the bat, stepping back to admire her, a proud smile on his face.

“Did they win?” she asked now, still not entirely sure why Sam was so annoyed.

“That doesn’t matter,” Sam argued, and Annalise couldn’t help but smirk.

“So no then.” She wouldn’t have found it amusing if she thought there was a chance Frank was genuinely upset - he was competitive yes, but his team were having a pathetic season, and he always seemed more interested in the attention he got while on the field than the game’s outcome. “Oh, well,” she said. “Losing is a part of life.”

“You weren’t there.” Sam folded his arms. “You told me you’d be there, and you weren’t.”

“I’m working on a big case, Sam,” she pointed out sourly. “ _One_ of us has to work.”

This was not the first argument of its kind that they had had. Sam was vocal about wanting her to work less, which frustrated her to no end. She had always been ambitious - she wanted things, so she made them happen. She didn’t expect anything from anyone else, and she sure as hell didn’t expect a free ride.

Sam, even for all his faults, seemed to admire this. He’d encouraged her to take difficult cases, challenged her when she’d doubted herself. He might not have been actively helping her to build her firm, but he wasn’t hindering it.

But then they decided to take in foster children, and Annalise had known their lives would change, but she hadn’t been prepared for Sam’s expectations of her to shift so drastically. She did not think that the same qualities he used to praise her for would become things he resented.

It was fair to admit that Sam was the more hands on of the two of them. He’d taken leave from work. He spent his days chauffeuring Frank to the houses of his friends and tutoring Bonnie. He pushed them to get along and checked they had their lights off by ten. Now that it was summer, he kept them entertained during the day so that Annalise could work in peace.

Annalise knew it was easier than figuring out childcare, but she still felt Sam was turning down professional opportunities needlessly. She worked from home most days, and for the most part, the kids could amuse themselves. Now that they’d stopped acting like wild animals and could finally get along, they spent the bulk of the day playing outside or riding their bikes. They weren’t all that hard work now they’d gained a little more independence, which was why she’d encouraged Sam to take up one of the many guest lecturing offers he’d had from local universities, or even a small number of patients. But each time an opportunity came up, he declined - sometimes without even telling her about it, which was another point of contention - insisting the kids needed him at home.

She was disappointed, but not surprised, even if she let her anger get the better of her on the topic still. Fostering had changed the way she saw Sam, too, and what everyone else saw as selflessness and sacrifice, now looked to her much more like a self-serving way of fulfilling his own desire to be needed. Maybe that what what changed between them, where the rift came from, if they were both honest - the kids needed Sam in a way that Annalise didn’t, and hadn’t for a long time.

“I think you’re missing moments you’re not going to get back,” Sam declared, this time. He folded his arms and frowned. “There’ll always be cases. This is our only chance to be parents, Annie.”

His mock-soft tone would have fooled her once, but she was smarter than she was when they first got married. She knew the ways Sam tried to manipulate her. “Do you think I don’t know that?” she snapped. All the negative pregnancy tests, the miscarriages and the heartbreak of losing a child had happened to her more than they had to him.

“I just think - ”

“I don’t care what you think. If you want to play the martyr and use those kids upstairs to validate your ego or bolster your image as this great family guy, then go for it.” Annalise turned, and walked toward her office. “Just know I’m not buying it.”

Now this made Sam mad, made that facade of calm crack, and had his real self coming through. He grabbed her arm with a rough grasp, and she pushed him off, but it had the intended effect of stalling her. “If anyone is getting validation from this,” he said, his voice raising, “it’s you. Does it make you feel good to make everybody in this house work so hard for your attention? Do you like being as emotionally unavailable to Bonnie and Frank as your mom was to you?”

Bringing up her mother was a low blow, so Annalise did not feel guilty at all for what she said next, “at least I’m not wasting my time trying to make them see me as something I’m not.”

“What does that mean?”

“They already have fathers. Frank counts down the days on the calendar till he gets to visit his dad in jail and Bonnie’s probably still writing letters to her father, even after everything he did to her.” Although they had never discussed the way these things made Sam feel, Annalise knew him well enough to know they hurt. She scoffed at him then. “Not exactly hard acts to follow, Sam. Guess you’re not as great a dad as you thought you’d be.”

For a second, Sam’s whole body tensed. Annalise was suddenly aware she was standing too close to him; that the spot where he’d gripped her earlier was beginning to ache. Something about his expression - or was it the way he was holding himself? - made her step back. Although he did not move or even speak, it was the first time in the six years they’d been married that she thought he might hit her, just by way venomous way looked at her.

“I’m going to bed,” he said, after a long few seconds of this, “before I say something I regret.” It felt like a threat, and Annalise supposed it was.

She didn’t speak as he walked out of the room, even though she wanted to, always determined to have the last word. Something in her told her to drop it, to let him go, not to push. She listened to the sound of his footsteps on the stairs, like thunder, and thought he was certain to wake the kids up.

She crossed the kitchen to pour out her coffee, her hands shaking ever-so-slightly as she reached overhead for the vodka instead, to calm her nerves.


	11. 33%

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will (probably) write something happy soon.

  1. **33%**



“We should eavesdrop,” Frank suggested. He’d been laying on his back on Bonnie’s bedroom floor for approximately four minutes now, and he was already growing restless. He rolled onto his side to face Bonnie. “Why aren’t we eavesdropping?”

“Because if Annalise caught us she’d kill us,” Bonnie reminded him, laying a few inches away on her stomach, concentrating hard on an old rubix cube of Sam’s.

Frank had to admit she had a point. Still, he sighed. “What do you think they’re talking about?”

Bonnie didn’t look up from the mismatched coloured squares. “I dunno.”

When the social worker called that morning to say she was stopping by, Annalise and Sam had told them to stay out of the way - which meant, as soon as she could attest to Bonnie and Frank being alive, they were told to go play upstairs. Frank had tried to question Annalise and Sam about why she coming over before she arrived, but they didn’t seem to know either.

“Don’t you want to know?” Frank demanded, yanking the dumb rubix cube out of her hands to get her attention. It wasn’t fair he had to wonder alone. “Aren’t you _curious_?”

Bonnie looked at him and frowned. “Maybe we don’t want to know. Maybe it’s not good news.”

“What, you think she’s going to take us away?” If it was really possible for your heart to skip and beat and you not like, _die_ , well, Frank’s heart did exactly that in that moment. “No - _no!_ That can’t be it.”

It _couldn’t_ be it. They had plans - like if they did all their chores for the rest of the week, Sam had said he’d take them bowling on Saturday. And they were both due to start school again next week - Frank was going into seventh grade, and he was finally in the same class as his best friends, he didn’t want to have move to a different school again, didn’t want to have to find new friends. Sam and Annalise had promised to paint both his and Bonnie’s bedrooms any colour they wanted as long as it wasn’t black - he’d picked green and Bonnie had picked lilac. Frank liked his room here, even more than he’d liked his room in his grandmother’s house, and besides, they’d _promised_.

“You don’t actually think that’s it, do you?” he asked, after a moment of silence.

 He could tell now it had been said, now it was no longer just a fear squirrelled away in the back of her mind, Bonnie was freaking out too, just by the way she tensed up. “Maybe we should be eavesdropping.”

“We should definitely be eavesdropping,” Frank agreed, emphatically. With one look passed between them, they scrambled to their feet, halting at the door to tip toe onto the landing. They eased onto the top stair, sitting with their shoulders touching, and strained to peak through the crack between the landing and the bannister to watch the adults talk.

“ - don’t have a choice in the matter,” Nina the social worker was saying, shaking her head. “There no chance of securing a conviction without a witness.”

Were they all working on a case of Annalise’s together? Frank frowned and turned to Bonnie, who returned an equally quizzical look.

“I understand that,” Sam said, nodding. “I do. It’s just the timing of it all - I mean, she’s just about to start school. She’s finally getting to be a proper kid. She’s doing so well, she’s come so far. Being forced to recount and relieve trauma, much less have that trauma put under a microscope, could really set her back.”

“I hear your concerns, but I assure you, I’ve seen this kind of situation handled very delicately before.” Nina folded her hands in her lap. “I know it seems intense, but like you said, she’s doing a lot better than she was just a few months ago. This means she’s more likely to be found competent. It’s partly why the prosecution stalled as much as they have.”

“Can’t they stall some more?” Sam turned to Annalise then. “Isn’t there a motion we can file to put this off? We need to talk to her about what she remembers. We should speak to her therapist. It takes times to prepare for something like this.”

“I’ve seen children much younger hold up on the stand,” Nina said. “I was asked for my opinion and I think she can do it.”

“ - with all due respect, shouldn’t our opinion come into it?” Sam sounded irritated, which made Frank a little uneasy. He’d heard Sam and Annalise yell at each other a lot lately, but he’d never witnessed it. “We’re raising the kid, I think we have a better grip on what she can and can’t handle than you or a bunch of lawyers who have never met her.”

It wasn’t until then that Frank realised they were talking about Bonnie. _Well, crap,_ he thought, _bad time to eavesdrop._

“What are they talking about?” He mouthed. Then, in a whisper, he asked, “Why are you going to court? What did you do?”

Bonnie shook her head, and he didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but it was obviously all she was going to give him.

“Of course, which is why they’ll be appointing a guardian ad litem to come and spend some time with Bonnie. Someone impartial, who will be better able to evaluate her competency. I imagine you’ll hear from them sometime in the next few days.” There was a long pause, and then, Nina cleared her throat. “Would you, um, would you like me to tell her now?”

Beside him, Bonnie stiffened.

“We’ll take care of that,” Annalise said, speaking for the first time that Frank had head. “It’s better coming from us.”

“I thought that.” Nina sounded relieved. “It’s important you stress the necessity of her being _completely_ honest, even if it’s hard. All anybody wants her to do is tell the truth.”

“I want you both to be honest with me,” Sam said, leaning forward, looking from Annalise to Nina and back again. “Are we putting the kid through hell just for him to walk? What are the chance of a conviction?”

“It’s impossible to say - ” Nina said, in the same moment Annalise said, very bluntly, “33%.”

“33%,” Sam repeated, and then he repeated it again. He sounded in disbelief. “That’s… specific. And shit. Is that really it? What about the physical evidence?”

“The physical exam only concluded she had been raped. But not by who, or how often, or if any other abuse occurred.” Nina sighed. “It’s just her word against his, which is why her word is so important.”

“The defense will introduce another suspect,” Annalise said, knowingly. “Her father’s boss - found to have had explicit pictures of her on his computer. Two days later he blows his brains out in his driveway. He’s not around to say where he got the photos. It’s just a matter of proving he had access to take them, which shouldn’t be that hard.”

Frank was still trying to get his head around the word ‘rape.’ He knew what it meant, and even though he knew it wasn’t technically a bad word, hearing it aloud, it sounded like one. Were they really talking about Bonnie? When he snuck a look at her, awkward suddenly, he noticed she was biting her thumbnail, staring darkly ahead at nothing, her cheeks flushed.

“Is that what you would do?” Sam asked, turning on Annalise then, and something about his tone made Frank’s stomach feel funny with unease.   
  
“Yeah,” Annalise said, blankly. “Which is how I know what they’re gonna ask her.”

“I’d be careful with that.” Nina sounded concerned. “I know it would help put your mind at ease, but it's likely her therapist will be subpoenaed. If the prosecution gets word that she’s been coached, or if Bonnie herself lets it slip on the stand-”

“ - I know how this works,” Annalise interrupted. “I’m just saying, she’s going to be fine. I’ll make sure she’s prepared.”

“Okay.” Nina seemed a little hesitant, but then they fell into an tense silence, so she got to her feet. “I’ll be in touch. If you need anything sooner, give me a call.”

“Of course.” Sam stood and walked her out. “Thanks for the heads up.”

When she was gone, Sam shut the front door and turned, and Frank, too busy trying to figure out what the hell was going on, forgot that they could be seen from the hallway. He held his breath, while a tear he didn’t even think Bonnie knew she was crying fell down her cheek. For a moment, Frank was supremely glad she wasn’t noisy crying, because it meant they didn’t get caught, but then he nudged her with his elbow and didn’t respond to the touch, and the tears continued to fall quickly, her eyes still emptily fixed ahead, and panic started to rise in his chest. She was so quiet, too quiet, and it was creeping him out.

“Only a 33% chance of a conviction, Annalise. Most girls like Bonnie go through this for nothing,” Sam said, rubbing his face as he sat back down beside Annalise. “Is it worth it?”

“If he isn’t charged, then she goes home to him,” Annalise said tightly. “It’s worth it.”


	12. Dead Wrong

**12\. Dead Wrong**

Annalise had always hated Halloween. 

Most likely, it went back to being a kid, being forced to go trick-or-treating with her siblings and cousins, but having to be careful about the houses they went to, because the white families in their neighbourhood were known to hand out drugs disguised as candy to the black kids. And that was even before some drunken idiot dressed in blackface would slur at them as they crossed the streets between the houses, as much a holiday tradition as pumpkin carving.

Thankfully, Bonnie and Frank were too old to dress up, but still too young to be interested in the drunken side of Halloween. Annalise hoped this meant they would be able to skip the holiday altogether - save for a scary movie and some store-bought candy - but then the day before Halloween, the kids burst into the kitchen fresh from school, Frank waving an orange and black flyer in his hand. 

“There’s a giant Halloween party thing tomorrow night. Can I go?” He slammed the flyer onto the kitchen counter in front of her, so he could make a praying motion with his hands. “ _ Please,  _ Annalise,  _ please. _ ” 

No one could drag out the word ‘please’ like Frank. He added extra vowels to it with each plea, growing increasingly annoying, which was obviously part of the plan.    


“I told them they should ask you,” Sam explained, leaning against the counter. “It says age 13 plus.” 

“What, you both forget how to count?” Annalise asked the kids. “You’re too young.” 

“But Shane’s mom’s bringing him! And Darren’s going with his brothers,” Frank insisted. 

Annalise looked to Sam for confirmation, knowing he was sure to have cross-checked this with the parents of Frank’s friends. Her husband nodded, but shrugged an,  _ it’s over to you. _

“It would make you like the coolest foster parents ever,” Frank bargained then, looking from one of them to the other.    
  
“See, you saying that sounds like you think I care,” Annalise said, dryly, but she picked up the flyer, a poorly designed collage of words in chiller font. Things like ‘Pumpkin Carving Contest’, ‘Corn Maze’ and ‘Haunted house’ jumped out at her. She figured if they could pay for someone else to facilitate these things with the kids, she was off the hook. “You sure you guys can handle it?” She ducked her head past Frank to look at Bonnie, who was hinging on her words as intently as Frank, but not saying anything. “Both of you?” 

“I wanna go,” Bonnie said, taking her hint. She folded her arms and frowned, sullenly. “I’m not a baby.”

If they had not been up almost an hour and a half past bedtime last night prepping for her upcoming testimony, Annalise would have been sure to call out that attitude, but she knew Bonnie was more likely to get ratty when she was overtired, and, at least for the time being, she was trying to pick her battles with the pre-teen. 

“Alright,” Annalise conceded. “If you think you can handle it.” 

What she didn’t see on the flyer, until after the kids had gone upstairs to do their homework, was that it wasn’t a ‘drop your kids off and come back’ kind of thing. It was advertised as a family event, implying parents were to stick around and help out, if not actively join in. 

She tried to get out of it, but Sam insisted they had to go - next year, he said, the kids wouldn’t want anything to do with them at Halloween. 

They did not acknowledge that this implied both kids would still be with them next year, even though really, they had no guarantee of that.They were currently a part of Frank’s long-term foster plan, but Bonnie’s future was more up in the air.

And so, reluctantly, Annalise joined them. As soon as they arrived at the fayre, a bunch of nameless boys she guessed she was supposed to remember swamped Frank. “Can I go with them? They’re gonna do the maze,” he begged, and Annalise waved him off, as Sam called after him and told him not to eat too much candy.

Needless to say, Frank did not beckon for Bonnie to come with them, nor did she seem to care. Annalise supposed it suited them both just fine - Frank didn’t have to share his friends, and for one night, Bonnie didn’t have to share her and Sam. 

Their first stop was the high school bleachers, where a local amature theatre group were performing the town's urban legends  - the Middleton monster, The Grey Lady, the mysterious disappearance of a bunch of kids some fifty years ago that was somehow never reported on. 

Bonnie sat between them, unaffected and even amused at times, while Sam and Annalise passed looks of surprise over her head. She was so anxious by nature that they'd already discussed having to leave early (naturally, Annalise volunteered to go with her, eager to get out of there herself) if it got too much for her.

During the interlude, a blonde woman who was only a little familiar to Annalise came up to them, leaning over another family to get their attention. "Sam? You couldn't help us out with the apple dunking could you?" She said, sweetly. "We're swamped." 

Sam looked to Bonnie and Annalise. "That okay with you guys?"

"Sure," Annalise said. Rather him than her - the last thing she wanted to do was chaperone other people's kids, or play nice with the PTA.

"Come find me later," he said to Bonnie, with a wink. "I'll save you guys the best candy apples."

She didn't seem too bothered when he left, inching closer to Annalise, and critiquing the factual errors in play.

When it was finally over, they did the corn maze, which meant people in masks with plastic weapons leapt out at them. Annalise swore a lot more than she thought was acceptable at a family event, and was relieved when it ended, but Bonnie continued to surprise her, and although she jumped each time, she giggled almost immediately afterwards.

They took Sam up on his promise of candy apples and then sat somewhere a little quieter to eat them.

"I thought you'd hate all this," Annalise admitted. "I thought you'd be scared."

"It's only scary if you don’t know it’s pretend,” Bonnie said, matter-of-factly.  “And if you close your eyes, it stops being scary.” 

Annalise thought of the nightmares Bonnie had been having lately - a result of all the conversations she’d had to have about her life before. At what age had Bonnie realised that people in masks, ghost stories and jump scares were lesser evils? 

“You’re a brave kid, you know,” Annalise said, but she wasn’t talking about this stupid Halloween fayre anymore. 

“You’re braver,” Bonnie countered, her twin braids dancing when she shook away the compliment Annalise had given her. “You’re really brave in court.” In a smaller voice, Bonnie said, “I wish I could be like you.” 

“Well, you’ve a harder job in there than I do.”

Despite bursting into tears when she saw her father in the courtroom, Bonnie had done a pretty job during the competency hearing. Perhaps what was surprising to Annalise was not so much Bonnie’s ability to repeat what had happened to her - she’d done that so many times now - but rather, her ability to lie during the cross-exam when she was asked, ‘did anyone prepare with you what to say today?’ While Annalise had inwardly winced, sure this was going to be the first punch that the defense could use to hammer Bonnie’s credibility into the ground, Bonnie had frowned, feigning confusion, and shook her head forcibly. When pushed more about if CPS or the prosecution had prepped with her, she said, very earnestly, “all anybody said is that I should tell the truth.” 

It occured to Annalise that day that Bonnie was a better liar than she thought. She knew it shouldn’t surprise her - Bonnie had likely been lying for her father since she was able to talk - but it did, and somehow, it had been making her increasingly more apprehensive about the thought of raising a soon-to-be-teenager who was easily underestimated. 

Or maybe it wasn’t about Bonnie at all - maybe Annalise was simply trying to brush off the feeling of unease that came with knowing she was now the second adult Bonnie had lied to protect.

A little while later, they were halfway through the haunted house when they heard a yell they both recognised. 

“Is that Frank?” Bonnie asked, her brow furrowed, but before Annalise could answer, an ashen-faced Frank ran past them to get out of the entrance door. 

They followed him, and when they came up behind him outside, he jumped. 

“You’re scared,” Bonnie said, happily. 

“I’m not scared,” Frank spat, but his voice was shaky and so were his hands. “I’m just - I dunno, I feel sick is all.” 

“Well, you do look like you might throw up,” Annalise agreed.

Sam joined them then. “Everybody okay?”

“Frank’s afraid of the haunted house,” Bonnie declared with a smile. “I dunno why. It wasn’t scary at all.” 

“I’m not afraid!” Frank sounded more distressed by the imposition of him being anything but a tough guy than he had been by the haunted house itself, so Annalise assumed he was already recovering.

“Then how come you were yelling?” Bonnie asked, smug. 

“Good use of empathy there, Bon,” Sam chastised. “You okay, buddy?” he asked Frank. 

“I’m fine I just don’t  _ feel  _ well,” Frank huffed. “I wanna go home.” 

While the kids began to bicker between themselves, hyped up on candy and adrenaline, Sam chuckled and turned to her. 

“Looks like we were dead wrong about them both, huh?” he said. 

“Yeah,” Annalise said, but deep down, she couldn’t help but wonder what else about Frank and Bonnie they were wrong about. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you want the chapter prompts, I found just them on Deviantart, https://www.deviantart.com/100themewriters/art/The-Original-List-of-Themes-125161634
> 
> Thanks!


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